Love everything Hi-Rez? The weekend you've been waiting for is finally here. The Hi-Rez Expo presented by Twitch Prime is a four-day celebration in Atlanta, GA that includes tournaments, cosplay contests, and an exciting look at upcoming game content. From today through January 8th, you can visit the Hi-Rez and Paladins channels on Twitch to watch some of the world's best SMITE and Paladins players compete for an amazing prize pool - and you can even earn some awesome loot yourself.

When Hi-Rez Studios' free-to-play hero shooter Paladins went into beta on Steam, many people got to jump into the zany, five-on-five combat for the first time. Even folks returning from the closed beta got to play a game that had changed drastically from its early incarnations from late last year.

Last week, gamers were introduced to Twitch Prime, the new feature of Amazon Prime that has a variety of awesome benefits, including exclusive game content. For example, if you sign up for Twitch Prime before October 13, you’ll be able to grab a Twitch-branded skin for Ymir in Smite and a weapon skin for Bomb King in Paladins. That’s two amazing skins for two of the hottest free-to-play multiplayer titles - and you only have 10 days left to claim them with Twitch Prime.

If you asked me yesterday what the greatest benefits of Amazon Prime were, I’d say the instant streaming with Prime Video, the ad-free tunes of Prime Music, and, of course, the extremely convenient two-day shipping. If you ask me today, however, I’d immediately start screaming aboutTwitch Prime, the just-launched benefit of Amazon Prime that has some unbelievable features.

When I woke up this morning, I wasn’t expecting to see Paladins, the F2P team shooter from Hi-Rez Studios, on Steam - but, there it is. This is already turning out to be an awesome Friday. You can play it for free right now, and the game's Founder’s Pack is 33% off through the end of the month.

The highly-anticipated Hi-Rez Expo will take place from January 5th through the 8th next year. This four-day event includes the Smite World Championship, the Smite Xbox World Championship, and the Paladins HRX Invitational Tournament. If you’re interested in heading to Atlanta, Georgia to watch the action in person, you can purchase tickets here.

The clamor around eSports has gotten everyone trying to throw their hat into the circle in hopes theirs gets some of the residual run off attention from some of the sub-genres more monolithic members. Like every other genre swell, the existential question becomes "how to be different than the competition, both present and future?" Evolve found its niche in asymmetry. Overwatch seems to be making a splash with colorful characters and humor. Paladins, which just spent the last few days in closed beta, hopes genre blending is the key to success. After about a dozen games, I think they may be on to something.
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